There is a new realm of possibilities that open up doors to your hospitality business when you start using marketing your business inbound. Is your hotel management business plan checking in with the right inbound marketing mix for your business?
Communication has become such a highly advanced field in that you can operate your business across a large distance, and even be hands-on with the right technical equipment.
Promoting your hotel business online requires enormous dedication and resources, and you only need to learn how to use a computer and get online to access it.
Integrate your Hotel Management Business Plan with an Inbound Marketing Mix
Why not take advantage of being computer and social media literate for your hotel business?
Gone are the days when you must earn a hotel management degree at your local university or college. In fact, if you can go online, you can definitely know how to read, write, and speak for your business with the vast information available via the world wide web.
It is now also crucial to learn valuable skills in communicating online, especially across a wide platform or audience that you wish to engage in. Being savvy in the ways of the online world is a must if you want to expand your business, as well.
There is no way you can be successful if your business operations cannot be translated onto an online platform, as the competition within the hospitality industry can be intense.
But just how can promotional activity translate to a worthwhile online experience?
Expanding your knowledge of the hospitality industry and its inner workings can serve as a starting point for learning how to promote your business online.
No need to worry if you have a 13th floor in your hotel building. You need to learn a few ways how you can spread the word about your hotel services online.
Include Content Marketing on your Hotel Management Business Plan
Blogging
On-site blogs help increase your business website’s ranking, and higher authorship and credibility rankings based on user feedback and citations. On the other hand, off-site blogs are usually used to assist an onsite blog’s efforts in getting online visibility, as it helps to establish a brand on a wider scale.
This leads to more ways to develop your marketing and advertising strategy online, enabling you to deepen your target market’s understanding of your company values whilst reaching out to a wider audience.
Video Marketing
Apart from written content, video blogs or vlogs can do much to increase understanding of your brand. If your product or service requires visual demonstrations or reviews from real-life customers in order to gain credibility, this would be a perfect way to do so.
If you are promoting tourism in partnership with your local government organisations, the hospitality industry could highlight districts and landmarks in your area that just so happen to be located conveniently nearby to your establishment. It’s all about placement and knowing how to do it well.
Infographics
Images work well in enforcing an idea of what their experience with a particular brand will be, but what happens when there is confusion or misinformation about your product?
Infographics are a great way to get step-by-step instructions and guidelines about any concerns that one may have. It also serves as a great tool to educate others about your services, your industry, and any causes that are part of your company’s corporate social responsibility guidelines.
Website Design
Finally, you would not think of web design as a promotional tool, but it is a reliably powerful tool when done right.
Websites, especially ones built for marketing purposes, should promote an idea and feel of a company. The look and feel of a website should mirror the company or brand’s ideals and products; anything less would defeat the purpose of the design.
If the product is geared towards a younger audience, you design it in such a way that it includes colours and features that appeal to them. If appealing to more formal, corporate tastes, you also tailor your online storefront to work with them.
Promoting Your Hotel Business on Social Media
Advertising is still very much present in inbound marketing, but the way it is done is different from traditional outbound tactics.
When it comes to cost, it is no secret that inbound marketing comes out on top. Outbound marketing requires substantial capital and increasingly large demands of your work and time, as they often require placing one’s self in an area where they can be seen.
Going inbound, however, is more efficient with your capital, time and energy. As Internet advertisements and promotional activities are generally done on one’s online domains, there is no need to be on-site in order to gain new customers or followers. This makes it easier to concentrate on building better content and forging a more intimate relationship with your clientele.
This does not necessarily mean less work, however. Inbound still requires investment and capital, albeit minimal compared to outbound costs.
The investment here is the continuing use of online services, storefronts, and lines of communication in brand-building, strategising, and other marketing activities. The benefits, however, will prove to be worth the investment as long as one puts the effort into it.
One example of online advertising, especially in social media, is Facebook advertising. As it is the most widely-used social networking site, there is an already established group of connections and networks that you can tap into to get your message across. These ads are often seen on the sidebar of your home page, and as your scroll down your news feed.
Haven’t you noticed this? Many advertisers have now become so savvy in their marketing approach that they even request well-known personalities to talk about their products or services on their own social media pages.
Twitter and Instagram have become a vehicle for marketing, as well, especially if their online following is significant and contains potential clients that the brand wants to connect with.
Indeed, personalities have now become powerful enough that it influences how people think, feel, act, and portray themselves, and it is something that online marketers cannot ignore.
So, will you let your hotel business junk in your garage, and not elevate from one floor to the other?
Advertising With Pay-Per-Click Management from AdWords
Speaking of advertising, most online companies now employ PPC and re-marketing strategies that get their websites higher visibility when certain search terms, or keywords, are used.
Brands and companies with a known following use this tactic in order to earn profits and gain valued online statistics and figures for their marketing efforts.
What can PPC do for your hotel business?
It is easy enough to understand; from the words “pay-per-click”, you gain profit from each click that the ad gets. It is cost-effective and helps an advertiser gain insight into how, when, and how frequently people are interested in their products and services.
As inbound marketing is relatively new and requires further study in its prolonged effects, it would do well to keep track of these efforts by gathering as much data as possible.
PPC makes it possible for one to do that. The advertiser, oftentimes the search engine or the owner of the site you wish to advertise to, gets paid per click of the ad, which is helpful for companies as it has a prolonged effect on sales as it more often than not will help you reach your profit margin.
Partner PPC and SEO Spot On
Incorporate PPC with organic SEO, or search engine optimisation, in order to maximise outreach towards a particular target market or quota.
Organic SEO efforts include optimising a website in accordance with the domain website or search engine’s protocol. This includes word length, use of keywords, backlinks, images, and social media outreach.
Onsite and offsite blogs, in particular, contain PPC as it helps them gain profit from their own efforts while helping to increase their visibility with their followers.
Often, the layout of PPC is in accordance with the web design of one’s online storefront or blog, and the increase in profit allows the content creators of the blog to produce more content.
It’s an easy and convenient way to gain traction for one’s content marketing efforts without investing a significant amount of capital. PPC ads are targeted to the websites you want your specific audience to visit with the right competitive search terms you input.
Say, if you are to search for “British hospitality” or “hotel management business plan”— the PPC ads will usually correspond to the search term. In that case, ads for local hotels or room rates may appear, or else guided tours around the historical landmarks for the area you are planning to visit.
Hosting Onsite and Offsite Events
No matter how much you invest in online promotion, onsite efforts to boost one’s visibility must also not be ignored.
Unless you are a solely online-based business – say, you are a website like TripAdvisor or Yelp– ignoring the operational costs of your hospitality business will put all of your marketing efforts in vain.
Being able to partner with both online and local establishments promotes a sense of community within your local industry, and helps in establishing a certain image about the kind of business you wish to operate.
Apart from accommodating travellers and tourists, hotels usually contain function and recreational areas that, in itself, help bring clientele in.
Promoting the location and the tourism industry of your locality is a good start, but it would also do well to promote your own establishments’ key features.
Say you want to appeal to backpackers, or people travelling on a budget. Perhaps you are promoting a more luxurious feel with amenities such as spas, pools, and the like.
In order to bring these efforts in, you can host events that are held in partnership with other establishments or organisations, and have the venue be held at your hotel.
Business networking events are a great way to bring people together, as this helps instil a sense of camaraderie within the participants. Hosting more and more of these and similar events will help to boost your marketing efforts on the ground.
If there are any particular agricultural or industrial efforts that your local region is proud of, hosting trade fairs and markets within or near your establishment can help in bringing a little local colour to your establishment.
Hotel marketers are always on the lookout for establishing key partnerships with related industries and businesses in ways that are mutually beneficial.
Importantly, you get to know your industry, your colleagues, and the area around you in order to promote not just yourselves, but the hospitality industry as a whole.
Personalise an Inbound Marketing Scheme for your Hotel Business
Wait, there are still more ways to promote your hotel business online.
Bookings and reviews can now be done on the Internet, and promos and giveaways can be given during identified peak periods in tourism and booking.
Apart from using data to analyse just how your marketing plan should be done, it makes an even bigger impact if you can engage and communicate with your target audience, making the kind of promotional activities you do centred around the clientele you serve.
Those in the service industry know how important it is to cater to their audience. As such, any and all promotional activities should be done with this in mind.
As the British hospitality industry is refined and particular in its dealings with customers on a daily basis, serving to maintain a certain standard of customer service is one of the best forms of promotion that one can do, online or otherwise.
There are no shortcuts to it; no matter how much effort you put into your online marketing methodology, if the product itself is not worth it, there is no way that your target audience will continue to patronise your business.
In all this, you must be ready to accept the challenges and responsibilities of maintaining online promotion so as to keep your business website visible. This way, it can be easier to transact and negotiate offers and deals with a wider network of people from all over the globe.
The beauty of such a wide group of information and users that subscribe to the Internet is that one can never really run out of options for being better at what you already do best.
Worthwhile online promotion makes it so much easier to do business on a day-to-day basis.
Operational costs such as human resource and customer service developments will greatly benefit from a well-connected promotional strategy, especially when paired with marketing mixes of outbound and inbound marketing.
Branching out, expanding your product or service line, improving upon current designs and sales tactics, and general improvisation through the journey of using promotional tools through the Internet can help lead your brand to new heights.
Reference Sources:
How Hotels and Restaurants Can Benefit from Social Media Events, Maximize Social Business
How Social Media Networks are the Ticket to Driving Travel Bookings [Infographic], MDG Advertising
Other articles worth reading:
- Accelerate Your Hotel Business Plan With Inbound Marketing
- Inbound Marketing for Hotels
- Going Inbound: Marketing for your Hotel Accommodation Needs
- Dominate Google’s Local Search Results With These Four Simple Tactics
- Inbound Marketing Leads for Life Science Providers